++++++In this age of cynicism and, often, fury, Jennifer Wallace lifts us from doubt and despair into spiritual insight and buoyancy in her new book of poems Almost Entirely published by Paraclete Press, who kindly sent me a copy to review.

Take, for example, the poem “When The Wing Gives Way,” in which the poet, like most of us, is getting too accustomed to death:

“I want to be more ready than I am today.Ready to let what is left lift me, draw me into meaningsthat will shatter me more than this.”

And consider her response to doubt in the poem by that name, which opens with these lines:

“I look at it this way: either you exist or you don’t. I don’t think –in your case – there’s an in-between a ‘sort of’ God….”

And ends with the light touch of humor found in some of the poems:

“the same one who invented oxygen invented doubt and I guessthat sort of variety keeps things moving, which you are a fan of.No doubt about that.”

In “Day of Faith,” the poet reminds us:

“Most of us believe in something:the garden, a star, the scrapeof the stone rolling back….

Then asks:

“What is death but the truth of incompleteness?An unpicked pear mottles in the grass.The well fills and unfills.One early sparrow can’t help but sing.”

As I read through the book, I marked it up – underlining exquisite phrases and putting an asterisk beside favorite poems such as “Atonement,” which begins with the “I” of the poem, starting a small fire and placing:

“On top of the stones, a small pile of messageswritten on rice paper and folded into thumb-sizedpackets, each with its own label: Fear, Guilt, Anger.”

In this act of confession:

“Righteousness was the first to go, its messagecurled and crumpled, the dark ink dissolved to smokethen drifted a little in the biting breeze.

Although faith and prayer seem natural fonts of poetry (think of all those Psalms), they are likely now to be mutually uncomprehending fields: most contemporary poets are unbelievers, and your neighbor in the pew rarely reads a poem that isn’t a hymn. There are grand exceptions, of course—Welsh poet-priest R.S. Thomas, American poets Denise Levertov and Christian Wiman—but still, Christian poets live in a thin overlap of contrasted communities. Paraclete Press has been publishing an increasingly adventurous catalog of contemporary poetry, ranging from the late Phyllis Tickle, one of the guiding spirits of the press, to Scott Cairns and Paul Mariani.

Runyan’s work fits readily into the mode of the new poetry, with its zingy diction and the fizz of pop-culture references (Facebook, NASA, My Little Pony). Her latest volume might be considered a sequel of sorts to the earlier Second Sky and A Thousand Vessels; she has been developing a method of juxtaposing biblical stories and verses with an aggressively of-the-times voice. Here, her inspiration is no less than the Book of Revelation, which is itself a vision of what will take place. She follows that disturbing prophesy almost chapter by chapter, populating its archaic strangeness with the anxieties and rot of our world, including a swearing Jesus, filth, desire, and vomit. ­Runyan is at her best at her darkest and wittiest, as in the poem, “The Great Harlot Takes a Selfie,” whom “software won’t block,” or the final piece, “Coming Soon,” which re-creates the New Eden as “backspacing into a garden/ before serpents unspooled from trees,/ before I positioned ficus leaves/ around my hips.”

Wallace’s new collection is a stark book: sincere in its continual engagement with doubt, silence, absence, and loneliness. The author concedes in her epigraph that she struggles to reconcile faith and her “Western mind”; her Triton, rather like Wordsworth’s, is to “deliver us from our unbelief.” Her God, a post-Kierkegaardian challenge, stimulates both a poetry and a faith in her that is “a dense hollowness,” the only respites seeming to come from friendship, love, and natural scenes, vividly and respectfully glimpsed. VERDICT Paraclete has done itself proud with their two finest poets to date, the direct and heartbreaking Wallace and the acerbic, accomplished ­Runyan.

Greetings from 2018.....I am eager to get back to these pages...and to write more about poems and wonder and joys and challenges. I am at work now on a short essay and poem about manta rays, inspired by my brave friend, Jann Rosen-Queralt, who dives with and photograph's them. Will post it and some of her photos soon. There has been good press about my new book, Almost Entirely. Reviews due soon via Image Update. For those who may not know, Image is a great journal on Art. Faith. Mystery. Thanks to Pittsburgh's Ann Conway! Readings have been and are being scheduled (check out this site's "Upcoming" page). Please pass the word about Almost Entirely, and please share your thoughts about beauty here.

Here's an image from DARK WINTER, one of a beautiful set of photographs by Katherine Kavanaugh. I will be reading with fiction writer, Paul Jaskunas in February among these stunning landsacpes. See the details here.